BK

I've mentioned my tendency to just avoid and it's amazing the ways life just will not let you get away with certain things. A few days ago, as I was minding my own business, this came in the mail. It's just a little jewelry package and there's the BK sticker. My boy was well known all around this area as BK. Initially, my breath caught and then, naturally, I burst into tears. I looked all over the place to try to figure out why in the world this sticker was affixed to the package and never solved the mystery. I don't think it was a sign, necessarily, sometimes a sticker is just a sticker, and I'm sorry, but I don't want signs to make me cry. At least I don't think I do. Anyway, it's just these sorts of things that get you, when a year ago, it would've been amusing, something I might have called Brandon down to look at.

Later that day, I was watching a show and they were talking about a character, Brandon, or BDog as some of the team called him. OMG, that was one of Brandon's nicknames. I end up thinking that it was BS because I was trying to go through some avoidance, couldn't the world just knock it off and let me be. I went to sleep and promptly had two days of dreams about Brandon. Not my normal dreams, either, very different, odd dreams, dreams that I know were because I couldn't stop thinking about Brandon and running from thinking about him at the same time. I woke up on that second day because I was talking and crying in my sleep, again. When I woke up and realized what I was saying and why I was crying, it made me start crying, again, until I fell back to sleep. Clearly, avoidance isn't working. UGH! **Edited 3/12/14** I just want to add what it was that I was saying so I won't forget. People will sometimes make the remark, "I hate this day," something that is ALL me because if you know me, you know I'm all or nothing and I either love something or I hate it. So, if the day is crap, I'm all about, "I hate this day." I've taken it to the next level, though, with what's happened to Brandon and over the course of the last eight horrible years..."I HATE THIS LIFE." I don't say it often, I'm trying to not get all caught up in the pity, but sometimes, I just blurt it out. When I'm sitting there crying and knowing that the tears over my son's life aren't going to stop, wondering how we all got here, it seems to fit. That day I woke up talking, that's what I said...I woke up to the sound of my own voice saying, "I hate this life." Beauty, huh?!

I actually think all of these things were around the 18th. I missed that exact date, again, which always amazes me because it has to mean that life is moving forward, like it or not, but I feel stuck in May 2013. When I thought about it later, I remembered that I was very upset on that date, seemingly out of the blue, but I was sick and I remember telling myself that I had to find something to distract myself because my lungs couldn't take me sobbing all night. Evidently, I did, for a few days, anyway.

Grace looks different each month, each day, I guess, depending on what I need and it looks like I still need a ton. March is coming up, which means his 20th birthday is coming up and, already, I'm borrowing trouble for that day. I'm torn between wanting to do something big and significant and giving in to an all day in bed thing because how in the world am I going to get through a day that will never come...an end to his teen years...how do you face the unfairness that your child never got a chance to see how great his life was going to be?! I hope that someday it will be with a smile and I will take the BK stickers as a reminder of one of the greatest loves of my life and tell myself that maybe, just maybe, God is reminding me that Brando is thinking of me, too.